Leading pharma e-commerce platforms in Russia 2020, by revenue

The most popular online pharmacy in Russia between January and September 2020 was Apteka.ru, whose gross sales volume exceeded 36 billion Russian rubles. Sber Eapteka ranked second with a revenue of 5.3 billion Russian rubles. The third highest grossing company was a group of regional pharmacies Iris.

Apteka.ru and Sber Eapteka comparison

Apteka.ru and Sber Eapteka were the largest e-pharmacies in Russia. Apteka.ru received over 32.2 million customer orders in 2020, which was nearly 9.5 times higher than the order count of Sber Eapteka. However, the latter ranked first by average order value, at almost 2.7 thousand Russian rubles. Apteka.ru customers spent 800 Russian rubles less on their purchases on average. Furthermore, Apteka.ru had the most points of sale among pharmaceutical e-retailers in the country, at nearly 15.9 million. To compare, Sber Eapteka was physically present in less than 800 locations. The company planned a regional expansion by opening its own pharmacy hubs in major cities of Russia in 2021 and 2022.

E-pharmacy traffic and apps in Russia

Russian consumers preferred mobile over desktop devices to access e-pharmacies. In 2019, 60 percent of online pharmacies’ traffic came from mobile devices. Thus, major e-commerce retailers in the segment offered apps to facilitate online orders. Apteka.ru was the most downloaded pharmacy app in Russia, as more than 3.2 million users installed it in 2020. Other popular apps in the pharmaceutical retail segment were Sber Eapteka and Apteka Ot Sklada.